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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







JOTTED DOWN COMING Af 
GOING 

BY 

ANDOEA HOFFD POOUnK 



TROLLEY LINES 



7j 



TROLLEY LINES 

JOTTED DOWN COMING 
AND GOING 
BY 

ANDREA. HOEER PROUDFOOT 



RALPH 

FLETCHER 

SEYMOUR 

PUBLISHER 

FINE ARTS BUILDING, 

CHICAGO 




.6* 






^A 



Copyright 1919 

by 
Ralph Fletcher Seymour 



rtli : 



CONTENTS. 

Water Front 7 

Together 9 

The Concrete Age 10 

Woman Alighting 11 

Man Alighting 11 

Why Not? 12 

Textile Ways 14 

Willow and Mahogany 14 

She Started Me Asking 15 

Vacuum 16 

Speeding Under The Live Wire 17 

Invisible Passengers 18 

I'm Off To Tea 20 

Starting For The Car 21 

Disillusioned 22 

Parallel 23 

The Swamp Witch 25 

Internative 27 

A Squandered Day 28 

The Street Car Orphan 30 

Parting 31 

Baby Holding A Basket of Lilacs 32 

When I Turn My Back 34 

Similitude 35 

Genesis . 37 

Still Waiting 38 

Composite 40 

Wind Back Of The Yards 42 



Wildbird On The Wire 44 

Round And Round 45 

Tantalus 47 

The Bull's Eye 48 

The Optimist's Ego 49 

The Runaway 51 

Pain In Transit 53 

Reviewing In Transit 54 

Bach's Melody for the G String 55 

That Someone 57 

Constancy .59 

Just As Lief 60 

Silences 61 

Motory 62 

Fresh Fields 63 

My Country 'Tis of Thee 64 

Sculpt 65 

Rivals 66 

Halstead Silhouette 67 

Imagine And Travel 68 

New To Him 69 

Star Dawn 71 

Verily, Verily 72 



TROLLEY LINES 



TROLLEY LINES 



WATER FRONT 

You, who often lie so still, 
Sifting the dense fumes of the city 
Into sea-lights and satin edgings — 

You, who flick through the spaces, 
When from intermittent streets 
You call us 
With your patches of beauty — 

You balmy, crouching blue wonder— 

You, who shadow our skyline, 
And make it dance like a hoyden; 
Snapping its pattern, 
Dissolving it back into etchings, 
Ragging them with your shore-wash- 

You, who laugh in your lakebed 
And spread out your body, 
Stretching to show us 
Your bowelling vastness — 



You, the designer 

Who stencils our borders 

With reaches of freedom, 

And dances our shipping on festoons and arches; 

You, the singer, to pour out and quicken 

Your waters — 

In the roar of your beauty 

Drink to our City, 

Anoint it with willing! 



TOGETHER 

Let me rather ride, 

For when I walk 

I meet but fragments 

And nomad fancies — 

Fragments of bodies 

Like dismal wandering accidents 

Drifting into tangles. 

Let me rather ride 

That I may meet men and women together 

Drawn in a single direction 

To certain landing places; 

Let me join in the ride with them, 

Even though they drift 

Afterward. 



THE CONCRETE AGE 

When I stay at home 
I think of myself; 
I find myself planning 
For soft bedding neutrals 
To tie into eider quilts 
To nurse my restless hopes. 

When I ride 

I think of my brother. 

The vivid wire over- crest 

Dissolves the cobble stones; 

They become one 

With my dust. 

They become sifted and mixed with doings. 

My concrete rides over the concrete 

Of the pavement 

Over the powdered atoms of the species that were. 

When I ride 

I am charged with the current of service 

Which turns clods to men, 

Which turns men into races again — 

Races that create the miriad-god — 

The god of conrete 

Who created me. 

10 



WOMAN ALIGHTING 

A star, a flame; 

A wondering clothed in turns; 

A soft-fleshed foot touches the dust; 

It grounds the current; 

The power-coils of the inter-realms 

Start a flow 

Through breasts and hair 

And parkway grass-splashes. 



MAN ALIGHTING 

Wresting and springing 

Clear of the rail ; 

One leap to the pavement; 

Delighting in himself, the goal; 

Then off to the next mounting and overcoming; 

On to the fresh arriving — 

All lustily attired 

For the brunt game. 



11 



WHY NOT? 

A pair of Maybirds 

Would not choose the trolley eaves 

For nesting places; 

Yet I angle for lines 

To weave into thought-containers 

In the thudding corner 

Of the car, — 

Here, where all these overhead currents 

Lend me private wires 

Into the unreachable. 

Over there sits a pinkish pair 
With half the passengers before 
And half behind ; 
Deaf and sightless, 

Save to each other, they make me see 
That only Maybirds have rights, 
Only twinning plans have sense, 
Only charged beings occupy space, 
And songs are not so out of place 
As news mongering 
On a trolley. 



12 



TEXTILE WAYS 

Every day 

When I get off the bus 

I feel as though I'd left 

Life's shifting looms behind, 

To take up my single thread again. 

I untwist; 

I ravel myself 

Out of the scales of self-mercerization ; 

I widen out again 

Through restful mediums 

Into the scope of decorative line, 

And primary color 

And planes of design ; 

Then am I ready for the Great Weaver's 

Patterns of tomorrow. 



13 



WILLOW AND MAHOGANY 

Out of the seat beside me 

She fluttered, 

Covered with slinking silk 

And fur-trimmed gauze — thinner than she, 

She! The water-blooded jade of decency, 

Out of whose veins 

The essence of at least four pro-genitors 

Had been bleached into aenemia! 

She trailed her fashionable figure 

And a stream of perfume 

Followed her to the car door. 

Into the seat 

Heavy with work, 

Pressed down with bundles, 

Came my dusky sister; 

Odors of the jungle; 

Limbs, like timbers uncut; 

Arms, quieted by heavy work; 

Skin, hoary with the wait of ages 

That would break the bark and build. 



14 



SHE STARTED ME ASKING 

Were all her goings and comings — like curves? 

All her footfalls — like metred lines? 

Were all her dinings and sleepings — just make- 
readies for verses? 

Were her housings and clothing — just coverings 
for more and more poems to escape, from 
their folds and swathings? 

Were her giggles — formless, gurgling rhymes? 

Were her turnings and swayings — just part of the 
flow of a river lyric? 

Did her light questions — need sonnets to answer? 

At least she started me 

Asking all this, 

As she mounted the step, 

And the folded panel doors unfolded 

And snapped her in; 

Leaving me on the curb 

In the sky-gray evening. 



15 



VACUUM 

Yes, she was beautiful once; 

Yes, she had a lover, too; 

Yes, held close little faces; 

And more — worked, served, sacrificed. 

But where are the traces? 

I met her waiting at the corner 

As though she had always waited there. 

See, how Time's chisel chases 

And embosses vibrant links 

Set with jewels — jewels of experience — 

All in vain, 

For there are no traces. 

Masks with vacant smiles 

Round sight-worn eyes 

In sagging faces, 

What abhorrent voids you form 

In barren places! 

Perhaps some day, we'll blast the beaker 

Tear the stone away — 

We women who bear no traces. 



16 



[SPRING UNDER THE LIVE WIRE 

I looked and saw the blown dust lift 
That flew before us as we trolled along; 
Its glistening particles rainbowed 
As might a mist hung before a sunset. 

I guessed some secret stir was in the wind. 

The crackle of the current 

Slipped into a hum; 

The silt came up in waves 

Smelling with ground secrets, just unlocked, 

Like anions fresh dissolved. 

Had the wire felt the thrill of passing thrushes 

northbound — 
Wild inside with volts of song to flood their mates 
As soon as roosts might rest them, 
In trees that wooded their long- journeyed dreams? 

It seemed as though the whole 
Had grounded suddenly through me; 
For I tasted the charge between my teeth, 
And the world of things went dead 
And left my schemes 
Like empty dry batteries. 



17 



INVISIBLE PASSENGERS 

You could fancy 

That the goblet of death 

Had overflowed for her. 

Her eyes seemed looking 

Through a gate with questions; 

Far away songs swept her with listening. 

Her's were untaught eyes and ears 

Mysteries were just beginning to open to them 

As whenceward they shifted. 

Her aimless moves showed untrained fingers; 
Could they be feeling 
For some vanished pulse? 

Locked in the chamber of changelessness 
Did she hold some one unforgettable — 
Still, secret and silent and hidden? 

Was she climbing down through wonder-rounds 
To find deep away there in the hold 
Her heart's stowaway? 



18 



Or was she listening to footsteps 

Echoing through the locked canyons of her 

memory 
Ravining and bridging her purposes? 

I am sure an invisible passenger 

In its over-flight 

Was coaxing her to reach into distances. 

For she smiled in under-melodies 

And did not note the crowd about — 

The crowd which hummed bass off the key. 



19 



I'M OFF TO TEA 

We'll meet 

And 'mong the curving silver things 

We'll sit, and look into each other's faces, 

All framed in oval, cloudy fragrance. 

Our fingers will flutter 

Up and down with their porcelain bowls 

Of steaming Pekoe — 

With its familiar body odors 

Whiling us to empty raptures. 

Laughter, and little flames 

Of love-words we'll sip 

Into our ears; 

And many a far-off look will hang 

With fringing memories. 

Ah, if a lifetime might be tacked 

Into such a satisfying hour! 



20 



STARTING FOR THE CAR 

At home, and you on the wing! 

Against my inner walls 

A startled longing beats. 

You, out where I can not stretch my hand 

And cover you with the brooding robes of care ! 

You, firstborn from the quivering orifice 

Of my love-pollenated soul ! 

You, that I could kneel over 

And libate with my breast's litany! 

The thought of whom 

Oft turns my muscles into smiles 

That break through every move 

And give with mighty armfuls 

All that I am 

To ease your frail falls! 

At rest, and you striving there! 

Straining all the outer man 

To feed the outer — for so 'tis willed ! 

And here this fecund, fertile, cumulous being, 

The storehouse for the strong-limbed races 

That shall be — the Woman, sits at home 

Streaming with the power to yield — 

A parasite, a satellite, a poem. 



21 



DISILLUSIONED 

We bumped each other 

Going round the curve. 

It was as though 

I put my finger into soft flummery; 

Uncertain vague bubbles 

Seemed to enfold her 

Through the immediate. 

Then I realized that I had struck 

Something — somewhere, farther down. 

Had I touched the inner crust 
Which the crude fluxes of the ages 
Had hardened into a fixed being — 
All the atoms having fit at last? 

Would the pryers call it her sub-consciousness? 
The prayers describe it as her primitive pagan- 

inity? 
Her rival name it as ainnate commonness? 

We did not call it anything, 
But both laughed, 
And from that instant 
Everything was plain between us; 
We could never be deceived 
In each other again. 

22 



PARALLEL 

So many haloes have been thrown at me 
To slip over my head 
At this game of ring-toss ! 

There was the youth halo; 
The lover-romance halo; 
The inebrious halo of piety ; 
The circlet of young laurel-lives 
Woven into the parent halo ! 

But I've escaped them all. 
Yet IVe had the lume of it all; 
And here I am 
Just a little nobody anyhow, 
That dares take its lonesome fling 
At the Infinite. 

I jostle the human bunches — 

They do not realize 

How sought out I have been 

By haloes. 

They little dream 

When they meet them face to face, 

Such wonders of the world. 



23 



The conductor charges me 

Not a cent more than the rest. 

But when I step off the car 

The frost of the hand rail 

Singes my fingers. 

Ha! the Iron has recognized me! 

Alas, I am betrayed, for It knows 

That my living spark is full of It — 

That my currents flow with Its veins 

Parallel! 



24 



THE SWAMP WITCH 

Rolling, rolling avenues of humans ! 

Seeking the scent — 

The blood scent — half way cross the world 

They have come, 

To jump the claim of the swamp witch. 

They squat all over the prairie; 
They join their own odors with 
The moist odors of smoked flesh, 
And a sweetish, half -human, 
Half- commercial flavor 
Floods the pocked alleys 
Where the cow-paths 
All lead to one shamble. 

Here in huts 

Like bargaining prairie dogs 

They perch and watch and dodge all day. 

Once it was an onion patch — 

Shi-ka-go-o — 

Mixed with lulling water-lilies 

Half the year. 

Lolly-fat squaws squatted 

On the dry patches 



25 



Stewing fish in earthen pots. 

We can prove it, 

For we're still here who remember. 

Now the old wizard — 

From whom they ran half way cross the world- 
Waves his greedy wand 
And they fetch him their bagged plenty 
Their clots of honey 
Stolen from the witch's comb; 
They lend him wampum to buy with; 
Their prairie schooners steam up 
To carry it to him. — 
These rolling, rolling avenues of humans ! 

But the soul of the old swamp-witch 
Still hovers unseen through the smudge, 
She hisses mid the overhead lines 
She sulks through the sewers 
And her clammy claim is unsettled 
By its jumpers. 



26 



INTERNATIVE 

Each one of my trolley songs 

Lilts for me fresher 

Than the one tripped on the last jog. 

Yesterday I met a calico goddess 
That shed verses like a moulting fawn; 
Today I race home with exploding lips 
To tell in a gale of vision 
How a bunch of pussywillows 
Transplanted the dune waves 
To the city, 
For me to catch their spray there. 

Last week a Lithuanian girl 

Passed me near the Stockyards 

On the way to a festival of her folk ; 

And yet I feast from her vanished eyes 

On the light of a people 

Waiting to tell its long dream, 

And let its language be excuse enough 

For the brother-wise; 

A race, holding in its broken bowl 

The coin of all the tongues — 

The broil of all the races ! 

The rattling old trolley will yet 
Run me into international debt. 

27 



A SQUANDERED DAY 

I'm home again 

With a squandered day to reckon for. 

How can I squander a day 

When another unrolls before it's slipped 

The brimming morrow's lake of longings? 

How can I be a spendthrift 

Of life and joy, those two pearls 

Which, through spending, self-divide 

Into endless strings? 

Days are Forevers in a single drop. 
The dew rolls like a globuled sun 
To set in infinity; So days 
Roll into the eternal 
Yet stay the perfect now. 

O, day, that I have loved, 

You are mine forever — 

Can you be lost or squandered 

When you in passing fair 

Have poured your sap into my leafing aims? 

Are you not an expanding thing like me? 

Within our two breasts the same morning buds 



28 



To burst into another day. 
So what is lost, when in gluttony 
We taste, devour, dissipate 
And squander each other? 

When the evening drifts 

Into the creeping dusk for both of us, 

There in the dark together 

We kiss the forehead of the Beautiful Forever, 

And wake into a dream to know 

We've never slept, and that Tomorrow 

Never yet arrived 

Out of the far land of Time. 

When the curtain lifts again 
Is it not simply you and I 
Travelling home from our Yesterday? 



29 



THE STREET CAR ORPHAN 

I can't ride the trolley 
For me that is taboo. 
Life has chosen me, 
Given me privilege; 
It has supplied me 
With my own motor, 
My own track, 
My own gas. 

Has not pork crowned me 

And clothed me 

And housed me 

And husbanded me, 

In an English mansion 

On a windy new boulevard? 

Has not rich, red beef blood 

Given me my place — 

And should I not be loyal? 

And did not the architect 

In purist nicety cap my rafters 

And my gable frontage 

With decorative blood-ripe buzzards 

To watch daily and nightly 

To keep me loyal? 



30 



I can't ride the trolley 
For me that is taboo ! 

1 must keep away from folks 
And stay sub-human 

That I may be happy. 



PARTING 

The bud leaving the frond to uncurl, 

The seed falling from the pod 

To jubilantly rush into germination, 

Can they outdistance the gulf of parting 

Which I feel when I go to meet 

The reefs of approval 

And leave behind your keen love-sifting lance 

Which opens the pod 

That I may rush jubilantly too, 

Into the fresh frosts 

Which will pierce my coverings 

And let me out? 



31 



BABY HOLDING A BASKET OF LILACS 
(Decoration Day) 

Hear the song 

That sings to me out of the basket : 
"I am Purple! 

I have reigned supreme for centuries. 

I have decked kings and flowers, 

Grapes and plums with myself; 

I have blinded the world with romance; 

I have painted altar windows; 

Blurred the sancity of love ; 

On drifts of heliotrope 

I've elbowed palace balustrades; 

Proud parrots of queens 

Noised me on their wings; 

Peacocks fanned me to the breeze; 

I claim the eyes of every babe 

I've decked with lapis jewelry; 

And breast milk flowed with my thin tints 

As I wrapped me round the mass imperially. 

"I am Purple! 
I have covered the spindle legs of potentates 
While with my deep dyed lash 
They kept the weak scattered; 



32 



I've tinged fine linen to drape martyr's limbs 

And bandage goddess' eyes, 

And none have dared to challenge me. 

"Crowned am I with lilacs, 
Laden with plums, 
Swollen with grapes; 
Bursting with myself — 
Purple!" 

But I looked again: 
The dissolving picture filmed itself; 
In the sheen of it I saw 
The Purple split! 
The red mob was born; 
The robes of irony dropped 
From the blue limbs of the martyr; 
The flowers in the basket laughed back into the 

baby's eyes; 
Birds seemed to nestle at his feet; 
I saw islands bloom with flax 
Growing fine linen to swaddle him. 
The mob quieted as though it rested by a cradle; 
The martyr laughed — it was reward enough — 
Purple had become like snow. 

The men and women on the trolley 
Were all carrying blossoms, going together 
To deck old tombs, and crumbling piles 
And market pits, 
With their lilac bunches. 



33 



WHEN I TURN MY BACK 

When I turn my back on the urban 
I go out into the frontiers of myself, 
Toward the gardens and forests 
That first bred me and branched me. 

When I turn my back on the urban 
I go out into the fastnesses of myself, 
Toward the distances and the expanses 
Where I am safe; where new reaches grow 
That make me ready for earth and body. 

When I turn my back on the urban 
I am surpassed with myself, 
And re-assimilated into the maw 
Of the many to which I must return 
With fresh wrestling- antenna. 



34 



SIMILITUDE 

The moon hung floating 
As though all the stars 
Were hiving round their queen-bee, 
And the purple parasol of heaven 
Curved down over like a bee-hive 
And shut us all in together. 
The squirming human swarm 
With its dubious gray stenches 
Was feeling more restless 
Than the one overhead. 

Each group was darting 

In its separate ways 

Only the one above was silently listening 

To the zum-zum-zum below. 

No one saw the queer simile 
Except the motor man and me — 
For surely his eyes followed 
The row of lights on either side 
Till they led right up 
To their starry doubles. 
He could not have missed it. 
I could swear he noted the parallel. 



35 



You've seen the pillars of the museum 
Lead to star-crowned suicide 
In the lagoon? 

So we both drowned ourselves 

In the watery blue 

Of super-speculation. 

At least I feel 

That he followed me in this, 

For he stamped on the bell impatiently 

And it all faded. 



36 



GENESIS 
As the bird 

Looks at its new laid egg furtively, 
And the mother 

Rushes to the cradle, at awaking, 
So yesterday's themes still fresh 
With the albuminous pabulum 
Of brain parturition and delivery, 
Draw me with the curiosity of a boy 
Looking at his new born brother. 

Lines are living bodies 
Conceived and craving nativity. 

Birth is no mystery to him who has^bred verses. 

Motherhood is only mind, 

And that's why men are poets most — 

Snatching what they lack 

Makes them so. 

Woman's a poet organically 

She brings forth similes of herself — 

Of the race: 

The deep pools of nurture 

Must flow out through something, 

So they choose breasts of women 

And brains of men. 

37 



STILL WAITING 

She sat near the back. 

Traces had slipped into her face 

That a Phidian dreamer had aimed 

To sketch into marble; 

Crowning her cheekbones 

Were eyes that a Raphael glimpsed 

When flooded with a madonna unrealizable. 

All the whorling grains of desire 
Through the wombs of centuries — 
Yes, through the pleistocene vortexes 
Of the inverse infinitudes, — 
Had brought her about; 

As many times had been made wrong combina- 
tions. 

There she sat ! 

Life stopped to inhale 

In astonishment! 

That had arrived 

Which all had waited for — 

The outline of full bodily loveliness. 

And I was there to realize it ! 

This top moment of time ! 



38 



But she was unaware. 

All of Time's ingrafted intimacies 

Wasted! 

The clamor of homing beauty 

Before its locked cote! 

Life's excuse for speeding up 

Come to naught ! 

I felt myself once more journeying nowhere, 
Cheated. So I stopped the car. 



39 



COMPOSITE 

Choice, the alchemist conjures new potions 
From blends too long kept separate 
By caste and tongues and class. 



Do you look down on her over there 
Beneath the globulous shine 
Of the overhead light? 

The purples black of some far back 
Grecian maid of the isles 
Sleeps in her hair; 

Forehead, laughing upward — broadening 
Like moonlit waters in Tyrol fastnesses — 
Leaves blue lakes for her eyes; 

Wide brows — which the bland norseland 
Curves to slow wonder, when too much sun 
Turns daylight into mystery; 

Irises — flashing out from behind 
Some granddam's witching lashes 
Lent by the fairies of an Irish wood; 

Nose — fine and dubious, high tensioned, 
Leading with frankish flavored accent 
Each sweep of the head, like a prow; 

40 



Lips — which for some stern Norman 
Spelled slowly from the Domesday book 
His rights — here spelled self-possession only; 

Cheeks — groomed where fresh winds 
That puff in the cherry-riping Adria, 
Splash their wild crimson on mating robins, too; 

Head — with this face sit lightly 

On the soft round pad between her shoulders, 

Where loads rested as her sires climbed the Tatra; 

Throat — carrying this nosegay 

Plucked from the races, — 

No wonder you swell with pride! 



41 



WIND BACK OF THE YARDS 

They come thundering down the boulder pave- 
ment 
At me, into me, 

These hammering, tearing winds, 
Lugging with them human dust 
And offal, — with their mixed in wealth of doings, — 
Fertilizing the core 
And plowing into life. 

Breath of the whirlwind in me, 
Where were you sown, 
What will you reap? 
Why must I be the windharp 
For all these racial strains, 
And the arranger of all these dissonants, 
That a nascent people shall be laid 
In harmonious folds 

And quieted as the dust on a windless day? 
And then must they go on and on 
And work and work and weary and weary 
And know nothing of the whirlwind that brought 
them into form? 

They come thundering down the streets 
At me and over me and through me 



42 



These wearying streaming humans. 

They do not know me. 

Why should I suffer myself to be 

The pavement over which they shall pass 

Into realization, 

While everyone about me sniffs 

And calls them the slum, the pabel? 

Why? 

Because^I loved them in their native fields, 

And on sunny September days helped them cut 

their grapes; 
Drank goat's milk at their hearths ; 
Kissed their thin babies, knew their want 
And their native wealth. 

Here they vainly strain, lost in the wilderness 
Of Civilization ! 

Let me go back with them 
To their own kind of woe ! 



43 



WILDBIRD ON THE WIRE 

Oh bird — 

How did you lose your way, 

Winging above the city's moaning smudge? 

Were you betrayed into the tangled wild of folk, 

By the rows of maples in the park? 

Or did the glistening buildings tunnelling the sky 

Seem like cliffs or mountain peaks 

With ledges of cool rest for tired wings? 

Or did the early wax-work filigree 

Of the unravelling morn 

Mirage the city 

Into a luring wilderness 

That promised brooks and leafing nest crotches? 



Or did you scent 
The worm, the worm — 
The worm that gnaws 
At everything? 



44 



ROUND AND ROUND 

So go, trolley wheels, 

And let us ride upon you 

And with you — now up, now down 

Over and under and up again! 

Are we not the cogs of your cogs? 

The rims of your rims? 

The reason for your rolling and arriving? 

Roll, seasons, roll too; 

Out of the lower frost lines 

Into the higher fires — 

Blazing with flowers ! Blazing with us ! 

Go, winds, suck the mist basins! 

Lift them into the mountain pockets 

So the thirsty sun can resuck them 

And throw them back into the overbrimming sea! 

Twist and drift, oh winds, 

In everlasting rounds, 

Until you give back seasons and flowers again 

To twist and drift through us! 

Come birds, mate and go again; 

Is not the longing for the perfect round of flight 

In the oval of your egg 



45 



Maddening the spaces with elipses 
For us to mate in, and fly in? 

The plan is but a game 

In the playground of periodicity. 

Our naughtiness cannot thwart it 

In its ever circling reiteration. 

Maybe the unhappy ones are those 

Who look for theirs outside this fixed swing. 

The peace of States 

The rhythm of the pooling races 

Is in the little fact 

That the round and round of each thing 

Slips no cog — while above the wheels 

The caravan smoothly rolls along its way. 



46 



TANTALUS 

"My eyes, my eyes, 

They are the great revealers!" 

Cried the blindman 

Just from under the knife. 

But I who have always seen 

Tell me, 

Where shall I seek for mine? 

"Love, love, 

And bodily co-ordination, 

This shall bring me unfoldment! ,, 

Cries the woman 

Breaking from the cage. 

But I who have always 

Swept through the vaulted abyss 

Where shall I go heaven hunting? 



47 



THE BULL'S EYE 

Even the palace has its farthest door 
And even the cathedral its pinnacle 
Quivering off into air waves. 

Even the endlessly chugging trolley 

Makes its final loop; 

But see that wondering woman 

On the front seat: 

She has no target spot, 

No point of sight, 

No plumb, 

No goal, 

No arrival; 

She has no nearer aim than the tangent of a comet ; 

And she is carrying a child. 



48 



THE OPTIMIST'S EGO 

I do not feel me travelling these rails, 

Elbowing the herd; 

For have I not been chosen to be I? 

Some great wise power pruned so well 
Through the bloom of teeming life 
That I am pleased with this I that I am. 
It picked me a keen gray firey glance 
To look out from the lifted mind 
It clothed my Self with, 
To glimpse all these vistas 
That open before me as I ride. 

Looking down into the cross-paths 

I find the source of this Me that is I 

(Which I adore); 

I see the vistas of the mother-worlds 

Bringing forth Fs and Fs 

To finally fashion just this one 

That fits my last and crown so perfectly. 

As I press forward into the expanses 
Down each passing avenue I look and see 
The radiating rows of golden paths 
Called for want of better names : — 



49 



Poetry, Art, Music — 

Dawning into the sun-stream 

Which happened to be just I ; 

Dressing the lambent fibers 

Which threaded down the pattern into Me. 

How perfectly they've come together; 

What a choice revelry of dance 

They carry on in Me. (Where are we passing?) 

So that waking they crowd my longings, 

And sleeping they people a world 

That I may roam in glory-gleaming ways. 

Often I meet John there 

And match colors with him, 

To prove that the heavenly streets he painted 

Were but the poor thoroughfares of his day, 

Compared with the endless crosslines 

And the intricate composite alleys 

That transport us into the glow world 

Of the expanded I 

Of my day. 



50 



THE RUNAWAY 

Why should a stranger's light touch 

Just skirting my sleeve 

Roil up all my trilling affections 

And set my heart bleating 

And leave lingering quivers round my nostrils, 

When I see he was only reaching to save 

What he held dear, and missed, 

Snatching me instead? 

The team broke rein 

And rushed by the car's exit 

As we three emerged. 

No one was hurt, except my fancy — 

For I caught the whole action: 

His swift leaping devotion, 

His self-annihilating desire to save, 

Was all lavished on me by mistake. 

She would have taken it for granted, unmoved, 

While I caught it, washed free from motive. 

The tragedy of loss lay tunnelling gulfs before me ; 
Swift bridges spanned them; 
Long reaches scaffolded themselves 



51 



That I might fly and take 

What was my own — 

Which had been freely offered. 

Did he see the look pass over me? 
Is that what made the man's face fall 
As he stumbled back to the woman 
At his left, sailing on in unconsciousness? 

A great runaway is life. 



52 



PAIN IN TRANSIT 

The drifting yellow leaves of the avenues 
Rush ahead and beside our wheels; 
They dance like brown-mad draperies 
And blow through me the sure cry 
Of autumnal quitting. 

The east-west boulder-laid streets 

With their sun risings and settings, 

Balance the vistas with cloudy yellows at both 

ends; 
And dead-leaf odors irrevocably whisper 
Of autumnal quitting. 

Where the brown avenues criss-cross 
With the leaf -dammed east- west alleys, 
I am teased and stumbled with dread 
Of autumnal quitting. 



53 



REVIEWING IN TRANSIT 
To M. B. 

I am not a hum-drum human. 

I am supping off white velvet saucers ; 

Flaming humming bird's wings 

Carry to my lips 

Rainbow salads, dressed with poppy oil ; 

But when I would taste their flashes 

They fly off to my ears like choral spectrums ; 

When, alas, I would listen 

To their swishing music, 

They slip me and dazzle my glimpses 

As sunglade mists 

Might drench the peafowl's plumage. 

I am vexed to tears 
In a joyous chase — of lines, 
For they fail me as wings, 
They mislead me as words, 
Blind me as visions, 
And smother me as songs. 

Come back, come back, 

Say it all over again, 

For I am not distraught — 

I am but reading your first volume. 

54 



BACH'S MELODY FOR THE G STRING 

Like a long breath 

Which settles all, 

It sends one wondering 

Down a winding river path; 

The blurred muttering of the water 

Echoes through the rattle of the leaves ; 

Then over and over the bow dips 

To the dull thrumming G 

Of the twisted silver string. 

The willow dips to the wave, 
The wire soughs the under-toned current, 
The wind sighs alto, while the wiley bow 
Wriggles through a never ending air. 

I, who can only sleep and go 

And eat and worry; who can only 

At sudden intervals 

Rise above that dull G — 

How you irritate me with that dipping 

To what I would escape! 



55 



Let your teasings, up and down, 

That would be jigs, go on and on, 

But stop that dipping, Johan Sebastian! 

Leave that to us who have no upper score; 

Whose thoughts can never 

'Scape the lisping alphabet 

To wade out into the swallowing depth of tone 

Where G is the molten oil of melody 

And not the misery of a beached heart 

That knows no ocean of song. 



56 



THAT SOMEONE 

Would he enter at some unexpected corner — 

That Someone, — who somewhere stole 

Into the crooning world, 

When dark silence challenged eye and ear — 

When the far-fetched particles 

Met in atomistic flight, 

And clasped in fresh floods of flight 

To fashion him? 

Would he come — 



That Someone — who should span and iridize the 

gulf 
Between the earth and heaven, for me; 
And charge the interspaces 
Twixt soul and body for me? 



The door opens. Is it he — 

That Someone who shall sense the infinite calculus 

Of the never ceasing pulse 

Which carries life — can carries it to me? 

That Someone whose lavish glance could throw 

The worthwhile golden thread 

Upon which these twitching pearls are strung, 

Which make the next beat of my heart 

Quite safe and longed for? 

57 



Should he come, — £ at Someone, 
And be caught in the infinite mesh 
My soul throws out, 

And trembling fuse his affluence with mine — 
'Twould start another spasm 
In the earth and sea and sky- 
To match the flying grains 
For another try at soul-building. 

Fixed in a plastic continuity 

Should that someone pour his full glass for me — 

Would we realize each in each 

A realm making for life without a blot or stop? 

Can I be watching the door to catch 
This vaguest shadow of the comrade-stuff 
My human need must crave? 
And should that Someone enter 
Could I ever doubt again 
The value of the poorest touch-point 
Which two charged souls might stablish 
And bring the spark — defying poet, priest and 
alchemist? 



58 



CONSTANCY 

Some stars there be that fall 
And some that stay; 
Some days that are remembered 
And some that will not pass — 
That's my little life. 

But the dumb hours 

Shall sift into weeks 

And the dripping years with constancy 

Shall wear away the world 

Till the waiting shadows swallow it — 

I'll meet you there. 



59 



JUST AS LIEF 

Beloved, shall I love you madly, 

As in the high sun 

The forest panther loves her young? 

Or shall I love you sanely 

As the coy pink of the grayish ball that was the 

hot sun of noonday, 
Pours its last glow over the disintegrating city? 

Or shall I just flood about you, adding a haze, 
To the majesty of the stupendous outline 
In which you palpatantly swim? 

Or shall I follow after, reflecting, 

As does the lady moon, 

In dry, dull, saffron, dusty, sultry yellow? 

Choose, for I can do all or either: 

Crush you or cozy you ; flood you or reflect you ; 

For am I not a woman? 



60 



SILENCES 

In the roar of the traffic 

I feel myself engulfed in silence 

Like the silence in the soul of a cannon. 

Did you ever think 

What an awful silence there must have been 

Just after the world was clashed forth? 

And if there was a roaring God-voice 

Asking aught of it, 

Has it answered to this day? 

And then — 

There is that other quenching silence 

When adrift I ask: 

"Whence came I and whither do I go?" 

Nothing ever answers it, 

And the asking voice 

Dies not even to an echo's wasted form. 

Upon the brink of these questioning silences 

Must I ever skim along 

Afloat in the drowning thunder of it all? 



61 



And this life that I love 

Moves breathing all about me, 

Waiting in hushed leash, holding back the answer. 

Will the myriads that travel with me 

Deafened to the same silences 

Stifle even my question into stillness? 



MOTORY 

Flash, and the rush and fire 
Flow through the living wire 
Till they reach me — 
Then rage under skin and flesh. 

The herds of the swirling desire — 
Through the overhead quivering wire 
When I reach them, 
I'll catch in the self -same mesh. 



62 



FRESH FIELDS 

Let's play and feed 

Upon the meadow, 

The passing meadow that stretches 

Through the royal town — 

From end to end, the meadow of 

Impervious lives that writhe 

And graze and bloom and beat 

Through the gray-greenish edges of the city. 

I find it a veritable meadow 

Full of refreshment, 

Where my heart can stretch 

And lave itself after unscrolling 

From the cramp of self-fulfillment 

And petty love; 

And cool its hot flashes 

In a wind that has blown itself chill 

Through the gray-greenish edges of the city. 



63 



MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE 

In Mark White Square 

In folk song chorus they were singing: 

Full-voiced, like saga-women 
Might thunder prophesy: 

And this singing foretold 

A race of singers would be born, 

Mixed from all the bloods that sing; 

It would have a singing fatherland 
And a singing mother tongue; 
It would weave all the words 
Of all the people 
Into one song; 

And queerest folk 
In farthest valleys 
Should feel the tug 
Of this song. 

And O, My Country, 'twas of you 
These singers sang 
This singing prophesy ! 



64 



SCULPT 

And the man said: 

"Shall I go on and on 

Gathering this raw material 

Which the man-and-woman life 

Has heaped for me, 

And let high wrought sensibilities 

Ravel me out into feelings 

And heap them up with a fumbled handprint 

Regretting? 

"No, I have lived enough to draw on; 
I have battered me a chisel into shape; 
I will carve myself 
Into a result for Art." 

The man submitted his effort; 
Then plastically stretched his arms, 
And received the nails of technique 
In his palms — all itching to sculp. 



65 



RIVALS 

A pretty November day 
Passed in crisp crinolin sunshine; 
It was the eleventh of the family. 

And a flaming red July day 

Passed on the other side — 

It was the fourth child of that family. 

And the little chill day 

Blushed hot in jealousy 

For they knew each other's history. 



66 



HALSTED SILHOUETTE 

Face against the pane — 
Child's face, 

Watching the flying pavements 
Filled with flocking, scheming, gripping 
Blocks and blocks 
Of Folks and Things- 
Two millstones to pinch that little face between. 

Keep it close to the pane, baby; 
Windows are everywhere, 
So look busily through them. 

The jam will move you on and along, 

So gaze out and ahead 

Ever — little face — 

The poets are awaiting your seeings. 



67 



IMAGINATION AND TRAVEL 

In the little home garden, 

Before I knew the far-pathed world, 

I gathered it out of the mists of distance, 

Dragged its purple back to gray 

And unpacked it into the golden space 

Of my childhood; I toyed with its splendors 

Its palaces and ruins, 

As a boy might untangle 

What's gathered in his pocket. 

And I have since mused upon it all; 

For the world, unravelled 

Into my travel-weary eyes, 

Has never seemed so real a world. 

I find it but a scattered group 
Of stone-piles, forests, stretches, 
Cities flying past; and faces, 
Faces, faces, faces, dubiously peering 
From an edgeless sky. 



68 



NEW TO HIM 

We were going home to the South Side 

He ventured to read me some lines, 

Bold precise arguments 

Like a brief, presenting his own case 

To the supreme court. 

They told of the new life-line 

Which he would fling to men; 

They told of the new democracy 

Which he had dared to dream; 

They told in floods and torrents 

That were over-flooding his own debris, 

And finally running clear, 

How a new republic shall arise. 

He wrestled these arguments himself 
With swelling biceps 
And taut backbone. 

I slapped him on the shoulder, 

Figuratively, and under my breath 

Said something like "Bully for you!" — 

Not exactly that, for I am too much of a lady. 

At any rate I gloried in him; 

Not so young either, to be in such a fever 

Of salvation jaundice. 



69 



We all had it younger. 

It didn't seem to set us prattling 

Half so much as it set us working. 

It didn't make us sleek and successful, 

It kept us ragged 

And walking to save carfare. 

It didn't make us the idol of a group, 

It left us shunned 

As though a slight madness 

Had better not be encouraged. 

It set us, not defying Time 

To produce these new boys and girls 

For this new order, 

But to roll up sleeves and produce them ourselves, 

It put some of us into the slime pits 

In Leavenworth — something to write 

And lecture about afterwards. 

But, dear boy, keep the safe path; 

Tell stories plastered to pages 

In broken lines and aeroplaned expressions; 

We need you — 

For we are only the trolley track 

And you the overhead wire, maybe. 

The Conductor uses us both 

To make the goal. 



70 



STAR DRAWN 

Ride the sky, my vaulting steed, 

Lashed abreast with fire and wind! 

Wheel ahead, 

With your nose on the thrill 

That rushes 

From the mother bed of the worlds 

To carry 

My worm to the stars. 



71 



VERILY, VERILY 

O let me go out into the sun 

Of tomorrow 

As the moth flies for just a day! 

O let me build into future palaces 

For the comers, 

As the evening red piles up good weather! 

O let me sow red wheat kernels 

For bread 

Which I never will knead! 

But the bat of yesterday is flying 

In my lines 

Always retracing, and echoing and concluding. 



72 




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